If I Can't Love Her
by SummerRose12
Summary: Is it possible for love to change you at your final moments? Has the dark heart of the Hidden Paw been illuminated by the only queen he had ever loved? In a tragic story of despair, Macavity admits everthing one night, but only to himself. Please R&R!


**A/N: This for MistoFan10's Halloween contest, and guess what? It's Demeter/Macavity! (Shocker) but also, it's a songfic. :) Please enjoy because I never thought I'd get inspiration until I heard this song, and thought it was PERFECT for the message I acknowledge for this pairing. I do not own Cats and I do not own the lyrics to If I Can't Love Her.**

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I watched them in the silence of the shadows.

No, not watched, I was scowling at them. Their perfection. Their beauty. It made me sick inside. Munkustrap's expression of exhaustion; his wounds being healed by a queen who shouldn't even be glancing in his direction; And Demeter's only look of concern as they sat together in the peace of the streets. No duel I could force upon the pathetic silver tabby would ever convince her to come back to me. I couldn't think of a reason for her to be mine anyway. She had a perfect life with him. That was the life that she deserved, as strenuous as it was to admit.

I saw Munkustrap as the gentlemen that I couldn't be. I can only laugh bitterly at the thought now. Could anyone imagine? The Napoleon of Crime as a gentleman... I can only see that as a ridiculous notion; an utter disgrace to the reputation I was able to create over the years. I'm the life that she would be miserable with, which I can see now in this picture of the gold queen caring for her injured mate.

I felt my disgusted scowl soften slightly as I trapped myself in the solitude of darkness. The elegant glow of the streetlamp lit their hope of survival. I could see the dependency he had of Demeter, and could distinguish the warmth and love that she had in her eyes. Their love for each other put a false sense of security over their clouded minds. If I wanted to kill Munkustrap, I could do it now, and believe me, I wanted to. But then that would make Demeter upset, and she would never love me if I did that… I could never do that to her. I wish I could, but I find even now that I love her too much to cause her the pain, like I had in the past.

But she'll never feel the same. She doesn't know how close she is to my heart. How I've adored her all these years, ever since we were kits. I'm hideous, inside and out, and that's all she'll ever see. Demeter will never hear of the precious little good I've ever done, thanks to both my reputation and our past.

Our past.

That's the only definable word I could give it. But the words will never shuffle to spell out: our love. The impossibility made me shudder at my own black heart, and even the one vein that had the capability of pumping pure blood wasn't enough to prove I could feel love. I was a lost cause to her, and it was that, and only that, which had devastated me.

_And In my twisted face…  
There's not the slightest trace  
of anything that even hints at kindness.  
And from my tortured shape…  
No comfort… no escape  
I see, but deep within is utter blindness…_

I let them go. After all, it was the only thing that I could give her was his life, which I had wanted to destroy since my young age. He'll never care for her as I have. Perhaps if I had been different, I would be in her arms right now, and not him… she would have loved me… But I've concluded that this will never happen. Demeter will always want Munkustrap, why that is, I will never understand. In my shame and utter hopelessness, I ran away from both my home and the city which had harbored my dark deeds for too long. Where I was going, I would never know, but I knew it wasn't worth seeing their flawless love. A trait that I could never offer her was his gentleness, his goodness. I would offer the world to her, yet she doesn't want that.

I rushed over through the darkness, away from the city life and the broken heart I had left for dead in the roadways, deciding to let the rain sweep it into the gutters, rather than having another find it and throw it away again.

_Hopeless…  
as my dream dies  
as the time flies  
Love a lost illusion  
Helpless…  
Unforgiven  
cold and driven  
to this sad conclusion…_

A chilling hand of wind fled over my body and gripped at me, pushing me forward into the twisted, unrecognizable countryside until colors became shades of grey; directions went into the opposite of themselves whenever I turned to them. I was clouded in my confusion, and that quickly molded into anger and fear. Where was the world that I had left behind? Was I really giving up? Was Macavity, elite cat of mystery, losing his mind and his judgment? It was a question I did not want to answer. I didn't want to admit that I had lost myself all because of the queen I loved.

_No beauty could move me  
No goodness improve me  
No power on earth, if I can't love her…_

_No passion could reach me  
No lesson could teach me  
How I could have loved her and make her love me too_

_If I can't love her, then who?_

No one. No one could love her. At least not as much as I did. She was just as lost a cause as I was, but she just hadn't realized it yet. I had my hopes that someday she would realize that she always loved me, but obviously that would never happen. I could wish; I could pray, but because my life was so sourly frowned upon, I would only live up to the expectations that society had given me. To live alone… to be hated and feared. But hatred and fear, even coalesced, was never worth what love was. I'd like to think that Demeter taught me that. I remember once Demeter and I reminisced over our relationship, way back when she did not have this fear or hate of me, she asked me how I would be able to prove that I was not just acting upon a whim, and truly did love her.

… I remember laughing in her face; I remember feeling a source of bitterness and arrogance within my heart that would always overcome my feelings for her… I told her that love was a false emotion. No one truly did feel it, however it was used to manipulate and steal away hearts since the dawn of time… How wrong I was. How I wish I had listened to her when she told me that love was like oxygen, and that not a single soul on this earth could live without it.  
But love to me now is both oxygen and poison. Love had filled my senses and intoxicated me into believing in it. And it took hold of me and my soul like a disaster to the Earth.

I could remember sinking my claws into Munkustrap's flesh with my teeth narrowly missing where his bones were. I could taste his blood in my mouth, but then when I heard his yelps of painful torture intertwined with her screams of horror, I looked up to see her terrified face. Her features were white, her eyes trembling as she looked into my eyes one last time. A painful last memory of her and me together… However she had reason to be afraid of me. I hadn't known that she had escaped my hideout that day, from whence I had captured her, only a few days ago, and tortured her sexually every night I had her. I ordered her to tell her that she loved me in the middle our forced sessions. She would comply with this, because she wanted the pain to stop.. but I didn't stop, because I wanted her too badly. Seeing her face, and being struck a million times by Cupid's arrows at that moment in the street had made me realize I felt more than lust for Demeter. I truly did love her… but by then I had ran into the shadows, dropping the silver tabby to the ground.

Perhaps that was the best decision I had ever made in my life, to leave her with someone to love her, when mine was always rejected. Was it enough to redeem all of my wicked deeds? I can't agree with myself on this… in this case, my love was not going to be enough.

_Long ago I should have seen  
All the things I could have been  
Careless and unthinking, I moved onward…_

I can feel the foolishness of my choices reverberating off of the structure of karma I had built together over my sinful life. A rigorous, shaking feeling came over me as I looked up at the moonless sky. It was a hopeless love I felt. I was a beast through and through; the kind of tom that she would never deserve.

I sighed roughly, looking over the darkness of the sky spread across a perpetual grass field. I could have sworn I had been here before, but I remember being alone with someone else. Or perhaps it was that someone I was remembering, and not the place I was in? I laughed bitterly to myself, finally used to being confounded by my own mind. I had drowned too deeply in love this time, and I realized then that Demeter was worth having, but not worth losing. Too many rebounds… too many failures at the attempt of winning her heart. It was all that was really running through my head.

_No pain could be deeper  
No life could be cheaper  
No point anymore, if I can't love her_

I saw the desolate dirt road that I wanted to run out on and see if any automobile would be going carelessly fast enough to hit me. Perhaps it was strong enough blow that it could shake my spirit enough to drain me of my useless emotions, but I knew there was no one driving this late at night, in this particular spot. I feel like what truly was killing me over and over was the constant feeling of her presence. It wasn't there, though, so I didn't bother looking.

_No spirit could win me  
No hope left within me  
Hope I could have loved her and that she'd set me free_

I couldn't take the edges of my sharp mind cutting me open from the inside because my heart was sending the wrong message to it. I was dying of a curious phenomenon. I breathed into love for too long. The sight of gold trailed the edges of the Earth, which was driving me insane more and more. It would never be how I wanted it to be. I had tried so many years for my fate to be with her, but in turns out that she made my fate.

_But it's not to be  
If I can't love her…_

_Let the world be done with me._

My unstable position in body and spirit trapped my options into a pitfall. I saw only one way of escaping her stabbing smile and piercing, fiery eyes. I inhaled deeply one last time before slashing my sharpest claw across the vein on my neck. Surely I felt a burst of pain and my paw soaked in my own blood, but then I could picture her perfect, loving face staring down at me, and her gentle lips kissing my eyes closed eyes. The warmth of her touch disappeared as I felt my body grow heavier and heavier… until it fell limp.

The last word coming off my lips was her name...

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Epilogue:

Macavity's body was found two days after his mysterious disappearance by two humans. His fur was washed over by thistles, maggots, and his own dry blood. They didn't know who he was, but they assumed he had been mauled by some kind of beast, so they did not touch him. Weeks later, the same couple noticed wanted posters with the same cat that they had seen on the country roads. They reported their sightings to the police, but by the time investigators came out to collect the body, it wasn't there.

News of the hidden paw's death reached the Junkyard, told first to Munkustrap and Demeter, who were now expecting a kit in only weeks. Both were utterly shocked, and only the gold queen had been dismayed by this, yet it was Munkustrap who was relieved, since that would mean their enemy would not be able to touch their kit. However, they both knew that they had not been together for mating since she had escaped capture weeks prior to recieving this news. They knew that she was carrying _his _unborn kit, and not her mates'. They had told no one.

Happiness, relief, and celebration overcame London. To current date, no one knew the truth of what caused the Napoleon of Crime's death. Most thought an animal mauled him and came back to claim his body as their victimized prey. Scientists theorized Macavity's body had returned to nature after being brutally destroyed by some unknown cause. But the most fantastic stories were the few rumors spread that he had faked his own death and still lingered around London. But no one knew what happened to him in the end, even when darkness sketched out most of his past… A famous death that ended in the an enigma; a death Macavity would have wanted for himself…

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End file.
